12.08.2013

What the Frack! Earthquakes in Oklahoma City?

By Gloria Dulan-Wilson

It's December 7, 2013 – for most
veterans, and those who keep up with US History, today is officially
Pearl Harbor Day – or the day that the Japanese attacked Pearl
Harbor and started the US active involvement in WWII.

But today is also the day that Oklahoma
City, my home town, experienced a 4.5 earthquake on the Richter
Scale. It's the day that my mother's home was shaken. It's the day
that pictures rattled and fell off the wall. It came in the middle of an ice and snow storm already sufficiently severe enough to cripple the state. It's the day that I sat
here in front of this computer screen and read the news notification:
“Earthquake in Oklahoma City, and nearly freaked out in panic.

My 90 year old mother lives in Oklahoma
City. She's been there all her life! My brothers and cousins,
classmates, friends, neighbors, relatives are in Oklahoma City – as
well as Muskogee, Okmulgee, Idabel, Guthrie, Ardmore, Stroud,
Burneyville, Jones, Luther and other areas.

I grew up in Oklahoma City, and I can
count on one hand – actually one finger – the number of times
we've had an earthquake in Oklahoma while I was growing up there –
ONE!!! One, and I was five at the time. Until recently, there was no
such thing as an earthquake in Oklahoma. That sort of thing happened
in California, for the most part. But not in the heartland.

I couldn't wrap my head or mind around
such a thing happening there, and I was speaking with one of my best
friends, Barbara, who asked me a question that had not crossed my
mind – had not even been on the radar of my consciousness: “Are
they fracking in Oklahoma? Because, it could be the cause of the
quake.” I couldn't answer the question. As much as I speak with
my mom and my brother, that subject never came up. We talked about
the weather, things from back in the day; who died, who got married,
what's happening with the rest of the family. I hear from my classmates all the time - we've known each other since nursery school days - but no one ever said
anything about "fracking." Talk about the Thunder Basketball team and how great they're doing - nothing about "fracking."

So, I called my brother and teasingly
said, “OK, who ordered the earthquake? Don't we have enough
problems with hurricanes and ice storms – do we really need to add
earthquakes to the list?”

What he said sent a chill down my
spine: “Yeah, I told Mom, there goes another earthquake. We've
been getting a lot of those lately.”

“Lately???? You mean there are more?”
- I asked in dismay. “Yep. We had one around Thanksgiving,” he
responded, in his matter of fact, nonchalant way – my baby brother
is one cool dude.

“Thanksgiving?!!! I spoke with you
guys on Thanksgiving, and nobody mentioned anything about an
earthquake. We talked about turkey, sweet potato pie, collard
greens. Nothing about – oh yes we had an earthquake. What the sam
hill is going on???” I was fairly shrieking at this point. “Are
they fracking in Oklahoma?” I asked, hoping that he would say no,
and tell me that Oklahoma just found out it was on the San Andreas
Fault line or something.

“Yeah. They've been doing it for
quite some time. We've been getting more and more earthquakes, and
more and more tornadoes. If it keeps up we'll have an earthquake of
12-point something. Maybe then they'll stop.” He started
laughing at this apparent joke, until he noticed I wasn't laughing
with him.

I said, quietly, “Uh, 8-point 5 is
the highest measure of an earthquake on the Richter Scale; after that
anything higher and you're pretty much pulverized. So, now is
anybody doing anything about this? Are there protests? What's
happening in the state government? What about Anastasia Pittman?
What's she doing about this?” My brother said, quietly, “I
haven't heard anybody really say anything. They've been fracking and
horizontal drilling for a while now. There have been a lot of
problems, but nobody's doing anything.”

Now, Oklahoma City is in the center of
the state of Oklahoma, which is in the center of the United States.
It's been called the plains, because it's mostly flat land, and, with
the exception of the Arbuckle Mountains, there's pretty much level
land throughout. And Oklahomans are pretty simple, home spun folk –
not really given to drama, or calling attention to themselves – and
that's across the board, whether you're Black, Indian or white. It's
not so much that they go along to get along; it's more like they look
at it from the standpoint that if there's a problem, eventually
somebody will handle it.

It was that way when I was a kid in OKC
during segregation. We were sitting in and protesting long before
it really became popular because we had Ms. Clara Luper, a teacher
and a member of the NAACP, who was not going to allow us kids to be
treated as second class citizens. Now, since we had our own good
quality schools, our own movie theaters, (the East Side, the Aldrich
and the Jewel); owned our own stores and businesses; owned our own
homes in nice communities, most of our parents either worked at
Tinker Air Force Base or with Kerr McGee (oil), but had their own
social life, and were content to never deal with whites ever. We
went to the Zoo on Thursday (or was it Tuesday?); you went to the
Municipal Auditorium and got to see Black artists (James Brown, the
Coasters, etc., and performers on specific days – we even got to pet
Trigger, Roy Rogers horse when we were kids. You went downtown to John A. Browns and
bought clothes - as long as you didn't try them on, you were okay.
You could actually try on shoes at Buster Browns, and look at your
feet through an x-ray machine, but that's because the store was owned
by a Black man and his wife. You had Juneteenth picnics, went to
Lake Tenkiller to catch Buffalo fish; read the Black Dispatch to keep
up with the news about our people; but there were few, to any efforts
on the parts of our parents to deal with the separate, but kind of
"equal" existence in Oklahoma. It took Clara Luper to bring these
issues front and center and begin to fight to open up the businesses,
schools and other venues in OKC.

Unfortunately, Ms. Luper, who made her
transition at the age of 93 in 2010, is not around to galvanize Oklahomans to
save themselves. No doubt, were she alive she would be all over the
place, front and center with the legislators, the governor, Mary Fallin, and other right
wing redneck rep-ugly-cons, to stop this insanity. But the rank and
file Oklahomans will crack jokes - like my brother did - shake their
heads and keep doing what they do.

Or the news headlines will continue to
write about fracking and the clusters of earthquakes, while the bull
shit scientists try to deny what they know all too well: Fracking is
causing earth quakes in Oklahoma, just like it's causing fields to
turn brown, people to become ill, and homes to disintegrate. It's
obvious that there are some deep pockets affiliated with fracking,
and that these deep pockets don't reside in any of the affected
areas. It's also obvious that people are being paid off at the
highest level, while the common everyday, ordinary American is
expendable – collateral damage in their quest for more and more of
more and more. And the fact that this is happening in the Heartland
– pretty much out from under the every day radar of mainstream news
media, means that it will continue to go on, unless this government
does something about it, once and for all.

I find it amazingly insipid that the
preponderance of information that has been documented on PBS, Link
TV, and hundreds of thousands of other publications have been largely
ignored by our so called representatives – in Congress as well as
locally. To their credit, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and
other states have been aggressively going up against these industry
pariahs who use scientific crap trap to obfuscate the legal system.

In reading the headlines that have been
emerging about this since 2009 in Oklahoma, these miscreants have the
audacity to blame the earthquakes on the oilwells. Oklahoma has had
oilwells since the turn of the century – we even have several
pumping on the grounds of the state capitol; several used to be
behind my high school campus. But not once in all those years has
there been earthquakes as a result.

It's kind of like the old monster movie
theme that we grew up on, where the people's interests and fears were
put aside in the interest of science. So you ended up with a
Frankenstein monster, or weird things growing out of your body, or
kids dying from cancer at the age of three and four; but it had
absolutely nothing to do with the fact that they were trying to
“discover” some new “new technique” and using the earth as
their laboratory – or people as unwitting human guinea pigs. Oh
no! It must be that suddenly some natural phenomenon that has been
around for hundreds of years just went haywire. Pay absolutely no
attention to the fact that we just dumped chemicals in your water to
see what would happen; or that we're going deep into the earth's
surface and actually extracting natural gas from the shale by
blasting through – oh no – that's not the reason the ground is
suddenly destabilized and collapsing from within. "No! We're not
causing that. It must be all them Oklahoma oil wells suddenly gone
haywire!" appears to be their response to the headlines and the critics.

I decided to look up fracking to see
what the industry defines it as. According to Energy from Shale,

"Fracking,
or hydraulic fracturing, is the process of extracting natural gas
from shale rock layers deep within the earth. Fracking makes it
possible to produce natural gas extraction in shale plays that were
once unreachable with conventional technologies. Recent advancements
in drilling technology have led to new man-made hydraulic fractures
in shale plays that were once not available for exploration. In fact,
three dimensional imaging helps scientists determine the precise
locations for drilling.Horizontal drilling (along with traditional vertical drilling)
allows for the injection of highly pressurized fracking fluids into
the shale area. This creates new channels within the rock from which
natural gas is extracted at higher than traditional rates. This
drilling process can take up to a month, while the drilling teams
delve more than a mile into the Earth’s surface. After which, the
well is cased with cement to ensure groundwater protection, and the
shale is hydraulically fractured with water and other fracking
fluids.”

Now, what are the merits of having more natural gas – especially
if the people who use the natural gas – namely us, We The People –
no longer have homes, communities, health, teeth, sanity? Who is
this natural gas for? There must be a market for it other than
domestically, because we aren't going to be around to use it in the
long run. The devastation caused by the practice is much more dire
and costly in human coin than the so called benefits of having access
to more natural gas. So it's apparent that this is being used for
export – to be sold on the market to those other consumers who
would buy it from the mother frackers because they don't have their
own resources.

Now according to Food and Water Watch, and much closer to the real
truth is this: “Fracking is short for hydraulic
fracturing. It’s a water-intensive process
where millions of gallons of fluid — typically water, sand, and
chemicals, including ones known to cause cancer — are injected
underground at high pressure to fracture the rock surrounding an oil
or gas well. This releases extra oil and gas from the rock, so it can
flow into the well.

But the process of fracking introduces additional industrial
activity into communities beyond the well. Clearing land to build new
access roads and new well sites, drilling and encasing the well,
fracking the well and generating the waste, trucking in heavy
equipment and materials and trucking out the vast amounts of toxic
waste — all of these steps contribute to air and water pollution
risks and devaluation of land that are turning our communities into
sacrifice zones. Fracking threatens the air we breathe, the water we
drink, the communities we love and the climate on which we all
depend. That’s why over 250 communities in the U.S. have passed
resolutions to stop fracking, and why Vermont, France and Bulgaria
have stopped it.

No. Fracking is inherently unsafe and we cannot rely on
regulation to protect communities’ water, air and public health.
The industry enjoys exemptions from key federal legislation
protecting our air and water, thanks to aggressive lobbying and cozy
relationships with our *federal decisionmakers (the exemption from
the Safe Drinking Water Act is often referred to as the Cheney or
Halliburton Loophole, because it was negotiated by then-Vice
President Dick Cheney with Congress in 2005). Plus, the industry is
aggressively clamping down on local and state efforts to regulate
fracking by buying influence and even bringing lawsuits to stop them
from being implemented. That’s why fracking can’t be made safer
through government oversight or regulations. An all out ban on
fracking is the only way to protect our communities.” -
www.foodandwaterwatch.org.

The sad thing for my home state is that
it is mis-led by red necked rep-ugly-cons who march locked step along
with the Bush era administration into this destructive evisceration
of the state. The so-called Oklahoma Corporation Commission (OCC)
comprised of three who are supposed to provide oversight, but are no
more than rubber stampers working in cahoots with the frackers, and
not for the citizens, have put together “reports” about the
“safety and efficiency” of fracking, and Oklahoma's “compliance
with the rules. In what was supposed to have been an independent,
objective analysis of the impact of fracking on the environment, an
organization called the State Review of Oil and Natural Gas
Environmental Regulations, Inc – a/k/a STRONGER (I know they
thought they were really clever when they thought up that little
acronym), puts together a 30 page report that throws roses at the
mother frackers, while doing no more than regurgitating spoon fed
information. Called the Oklahoma Hydraulic Fracturing – State
Review, 2011, is a pack of garbage from beginning to end. Governor Fallin is either in cahoots
with them, or, like so many other rep-ugly-cons, little more than an
automaton, carrying the water for the rest of the party.

At any rate, in the entire report,
which alleges that Oklahoma has been fracking for 60 years, nothing,
whatsoever, was mentioned about the fact that the infrastructure of
the entire state is being destabilized by fracking, and that these
fissures, which are supposed to be filled back in with oil derrick
grade steel, is causing earthquake like tremors, as the land begins
to collapse in on itself. Interestingly enough, these bozos send out
“inspectors” who are supposed to observe the process and
ascertain whether or not things are being done correctly. However, I
doubt seriously if any of them have ever operated the hydraulic
equipment, ever gone down 200 feet to the level where the shale is
located, ever first hand observed whether or not the steel and
concrete being put in is of the same strength and quality as the
shale they've destroyed.

Probably not. Considering that this is
a rubber stamp, multi-stake holder group, they have high stakes in
continuing fracking, and will definitely not do or say anything that
would even allude to the real truth. Fracking is destroying
Oklahoma. And with only 12 Democrats in the state senate, and 32 in the House of Representatives - both in the minority - they've got enough morons in the majority to
vote down, stave off, and otherwise block any measure that would mean
the end of this heinous process.

These, no doubt, are descendents of the
“Joads” – who, precipitated the dust bowl era in
Oklahoma, where they had so depleted the soil because of their
ignorance in farming – stripped the land of its nutrients and
natural habitats because the jerks didn't understand the merits and
necessity for crop rotation – and after people began to starve to
death, beat it for California because they could not longer live
there. {The “Joads,” for those of you who don't remember,
were the family John Steinbeck made famous in his novel “The
Grapes of Wrath.” A bunch of dumb hicks who, well portrayed in
the movie by Henry Fonda and Jane Darwell, were so
stupid they didn't see that their own actions times 130,000 others
just like them, is what caused our state to go bone dry. Oklahoma
had been a state rich with green grass, flowing rivers, and arable
land before they came; it was not made to be raped over and over and
over again. From the Oklahoma Ruin of 1889, it took them less
than 40 years to nearly destroy the entire state. Then they jumped
into their rickety buckboards and left to go to “greener pastures”
in California. Thank goodness, because, had they stayed, we'd be
dunes of red dust by now}.

And now, the descendants of the “Joads”
are back in the personage of the Oklahoma government, and just as
dumb as their forebearers. Making stupid, self serving, party-driven
decisions, and watching the very earth crumble in front of them,
while completely ignoring the situation, and writing bogus reports
that assert that “everything is doing fine,” and “fracking is
not the problem – it's the oil wells.”

News article after news article appears
to have aroused no glimmer of common sense in this legislative group;
and as I have said before, most Oklahomans will unfortunately wait it
out; and then become the poster state for stupidity writ large, when
the entire state, or a substantial part of it, collapses in upon
itself, after having allowed them to destroy the infrastructure, and
the pristine environment so many of us enjoyed coming up.

The federal government, over ridden
with Bush era remnants, Cruz tea baggers, and other rep-ugly-cons, will
definitely not put a stop to this because their pockets, like those
in Oklahoma, are benefiting from it.

The only people who are going to save
Oklahoma from fracking are Oklahomans themselves – regardless of
their party affiliation; regardless of whether they're Indian, Black,
white, or whatever. If they love their state, and want to continue
to sing “You're doing fine, Oklahoma; Oklahoma, OK!” -- then
they'd better do more than sit around and watch the corn grow and
lazy hawks circling the sky. In fact, if fracking continues, there
will be no arable (fertile) land to grow the corn in, and the hawks
will die from the pollution released into the air. Lake Tenkiller
will dry up, and there will be no more succulent buffalo fish. The
houses will continue to crumble as the substructure is compromised;
and our mothers and grand mothers will no longer be able to live out
their days in peace. And, just like the dust bowl era of the
twenties, people will leave the state in droves for a better place to
live.

Oklahoma it's time to wake the frack up
and stop this now!!!! If your representatives won't represent you,
represent yourselves. Fight for yourselves. Take this over their
heads to the White House – because it's clear you have no one on
your side in Congress. These are the same people who also say you
don't need Affordable Health Care, while collecting a salary from
your tax dollars, and allowing your state, your homes, your very
lives to be destroyed.

This issue, of course, is by no means
isolated to Oklahoma, it's directed to all the states – the pseudo
scientists who are alleging that fracking does no harm, should be
arrested for perpetrating a big lie; for depraved indifference to the
human condition; for environmental homicide. And those who operate
the big machines should be sentenced to living down there around the
shales that they violated, so that they can see first hand what it's
like to bore holes in the earth at depths beyond which they can
adequately replace the natural, God given and designed substructure.

The earthquake on Saturday, December 7,
2013 in Oklahoma City was 4.5 on the Richter Scale. In California it
would have brought a few large buildings down, or at the very least
compromised the foundation. If, as my brother jokingly said, it gets
to higher, there will be no State Capitol, no oil wells, no streets,
or anything else left. However, as well we know, there are some
people who love watching train wrecks; others who love pulling wings
off butterflies; and still others who love watching human torment
while standing back at a safe distance. They will continue to make
their money, get in their jets, fly off ot their private homes, safe
and sound out of the US, and give a pittance to charitable causes
that are formed to help the victims they caused.